A Brief History of... Myst

you missed a game that some see is a casual throwaway a series of pretty pictures sold next to the after dark screensaver collection at Office Depot others see the series is a collection of challenging puzzles and strange worlds and then there are the die-hard fans the ones most people never knew existed who quietly share in a fictional universe that its creators have constructed over the course of two decades Myst exploded onto the scene in the early 90s heralding a technical revolution and bringing gaming to audiences who experienced a dawei from the mediums ultraviolence and Competitiveness but it didn't end there the series continued for over two decades attracting a dedicated core fan base yet garnering little to no mainstream attention before petering out into obscurity a strange fate for all was once the best-selling most popular game of all time cyan has just released abduction the spiritual successor to missed a game that takes the gameplay innovations and sense of wondrous mystery that the series is known for into a whole new world it seems as good a time as any to look back at the long and winding history of the game and the company that was supposed to herald a revolution and the decades-long attempt to recapture that lightning in a bottle welcome to loot a drum I'm Nate Behrens and this is a brief history of where I read the entire Wikipedia page so you don't have to Brandin Robin Miller had been creating worlds for years before mists as far back as junior high ran program games on a mainframe computer at the University of New Mexico his younger brother Robin studied art and music and spent nearly every waking moment painting or composing bored of working as a programmer for financial software ran stumbled onto a way to combine Robins talents with his own and in the late 80s he proposed that they collaborate on a computer game made using Apple Macintosh as hyper card software hypercard was a precursor to the hypertext protocol that would underlie the burgeoning world wide web it was created by Apple to allow non programmers to create interactive applications by layering images with interactive clickable hotspots that link to other cards images animations and other multimedia elements the Miller brothers saw the potential for creating point-and-click adventure games in the format stringing together static images linked by hotspots that would simulate moving to the world first-person adventure games of the time generally relied on tiny graphical windows and lots of text describing the scene while players interacted using a text parser through HyperCard they could streamline that presentation together they found at sign productions in their parents basement in Spokane Washington Siam was founded by my brother and I really for the purpose of making world want to make places not Gamze they're early projects were whimsical children's games the manhole was released in 1988 for the Macintosh and had players descending into the titular manhole to discover an Alice in Wonderland esque fantasy world full of talking animals and goofy humor Rand handled the programming and Robin created the art and sound effects while they shared design duties at a Game Developers Conference post-mortem robin stated that he started drawing the initial scenes of the manhole in sequential fashion before reaching a point where he wasn't sure where to progress and from there the nature of the medium naturally pushed the Millers towards a nonlinear structure the manhole featured static black-and-white graphics and limited sound effects that were nevertheless extremely impressive on the Mac which paled as a gaming platform compared to the other systems today the game was later re-released by Activision on cd-rom making it the first game released on the then-fledgling platform a year later they released another children's game called cosmic Osmo and the world beyond the macro which should give you an idea of the tone of science early work cosmic Osmo utilized the video plugin for hyper cards that allowed for smooth animations to play over a static background which allowed for a big jump in graphical quality the world was still in black and white but it was now full of life with every screen crammed full of hotspots that triggered wacky animations cosmic Osmo put players in control of spaceship that traveled between seven strange planets full of creatures and sites to discover notably there were no puzzles the game was more of a playground for the imagination than a challenge at some point after cosmic Ozma was released the brothers decided that they wanted to work on a game geared towards an adult audience and pitched an idea to Activision for a game called the grey summons they wanted the players to be a catalyst in the story one who had to approach complex issues and make ethical choices with consequences activision told them to stick to kids games so disheartened and too broke to argue they did in 1991 science at third black-and-white hypercard game called spelunk sand the caves of mr. sudo similarly plot listened nonlinear spelunked was more overtly educational than its predecessors sending players into a series of puzzle rooms connected by underground tunnels each room had a theme connected with a specific branch knowledge including math biology and physics a significant chunk of the games puzzles involved figuring out how to properly manipulate devices strewn about the caves a theme that would become a mainstay of science work in fact while Myst was hailed upon release as revolutionary but did the framework for its design is obvious in these earlier works the intended audience is younger and the tone is far less serious but the minimalist storytelling his lair along with the open-ended exploration the stripped-down interface the lack of death or other serious consequences and the player is the main character rather than inhabiting an avatar or predetermine character even so the games were not exactly leading the Millers to financial stability they were struggling and seriously considering leaving the industry especially after the rejection of the gray Symons page then sunsoft a Japanese publisher approached them with an idea what a sign made a game similar to the adventures they've been producing but for an older audience what a crazy idea they went back to the pillars that had informed the gray summons pitch a mature storyline a more developed world the players protagonist an ethical choice and non-arbitrary puzzles with no large fanbase and no real expectations Rand and Robin word free to design a world for themselves one that appealed to their tastes and that they wanted to spend time in growing up with Lord of the Rings and the Narnia series authors that built places definitely shaped us Dungeons and Dragons and Zork provided interactive storytelling and exploration techniques as well as puzzle design while CS Lewis and Jules Verne provided fantastical worlds to draw from as well as the concepts of portals to other worlds and quite literally a mysterious island they decided the game would take place on an island filled with cryptic puzzles they wanted to have a variety of locations but technical limitations force them to compartmentalize the game space into discrete separate zones which led to the creation of Ages or unique separate worlds that the player would teleport to via linking books and explore the island was to be inhabited by two brothers each trapped in prison books and each trying to convince the player to free them and them alone the books allowed the brothers to communicate to the player but provided an explanation and excuse for preventing the player from talking back one major pillar in the pitch was to make the puzzles feel non-arbitrary and integrated into the world the goal was to have all puzzles be solvable with common sense and observation you're fixing machine or discovering an alternate route instead of just solving a puzzle it's arguable how much they succeeded in that but nevertheless they tried according to the brothers the name mists popped up in conversation or the phone and both Rand and Robin immediately fell in love with it and never looked back with the design in place the brothers pitched Myst to Sunsoft and finally received the green light alongside a budget of 265 thousand dollars before launching into production the Millers playtested mist in a tabletop RPG session describing the environment to friends as a dungeon master would and tracking their actions and responses according to Robin the session led to some major design changes before they'd ever rendered a single image as for those images the initial plan had called for hand-drawn digitized graphics like science previous work created by Robin but early production tests worried him things weren't turning out as immersive or believable as he'd imagined searching for an alternative he did some tests using 3d modeling software and was thrilled with the results from that point on Myst was going to be a 3d game with a distinctive cinematic look rendered in strata vision d and touched up in photoshop 1.0 so they had a set of interesting worlds and puzzles to fill them and even a simple plot two brothers sirrus and achenar trapped in an island both claiming to be wrongly imprisoned both blaming the other which do you believe which do free however they soon felt the story was too thin and realized that for it to be satisfactory they needed another element a third character that would comment on the plot and complicate it this led to the creation of atreus the father of the two brothers himself trapped in an age outside the island throughout development this core story was developed further as the Millers felt that they would be better able to create an interesting world if they had a deep backstory to draw on borrowing from an unfinished novel of Robins called dummy hut they created a race of people called the dunny who existed apart from humans on earth the dunny had the ability to create new worlds by writing in special books they could then teleport to these worlds with separate linking books Atrus was a dummy who had been forced to imprison his sons after they grew violent and greedy terrorizing and enslaving the inhabitants of many of atreus ages little of this content made it into the game itself but the notes they compiled would later go on to inform the sequels and spin-offs novels in order to make the characters more believable the Millers chose to use full motion video once the QuickTime format was released halfway through production and as for the actors where were they going to get two brothers despite lacking any acting background they chose to play the roles themselves with Robin portraying Cirrus and Rand playing both economists another element that came in later in production was the music Myst was initially designed to use only ambient noise as a soundtrack and when brøderbund their distribution company suggested adding music the Millers felt that an external soundtrack would ruin the sense of immersion we didn't want music interfering with the gameplay and so we weren't going to put any music in when we finally did do a couple songs we realized it wasn't an interference it didn't sound like Super Mario Brothers they seemed to really help the mood of certain places that that you're asking robban composed a synthesized ambient soundtrack that has since become iconic Myst was released in September 1993 for Mac OS to rave reviews and an unusual amount of mainstream press coverage in the form of glowing hyperbolic think pieces about the dawn of a new art form or proof that video games were maturing from their adolescent phase the game's simplicity and lack of violence drew in casual audiences who are turned off by the intense skill based mechanics of most games as well as the focus on non-stop carnage that led to massive sales far beyond the meager expectations of Sian and his publisher mists realistic graphics full motion video and CD audio help push sales of cd-rom drives making CD is a viable choice for delivering games well into the next decade Myst was a bonafide phenomenon people went out to buy computers just to play the game their friends were talking about Myst quickly became the best-selling game of all time an honor it held for nearly a decade until the Sims finally topped it in 2002 looking back Myst has not aged terribly well the graphics retained some of their stark evocative power but they are hardly impressive the ages lack a coherent aesthetic and many of the elements feel random or out of place like the 1950s style rocketship perched on a cliff or the dentist's chair in a planetarium the puzzles despite the Miller's best attempts are often totally arbitrary not to mention Mouse throwing ly difficult and frustrating even so the game remains atmospheric and compelling a strange and fascinating game that feels alternately timeless and impossibly 90s there was a maturity and purity to mist that felt revolutionary at a time when video games were even more obsessed with adolescent power fantasy than today and while gamers had known for a long time that their medium was capable of something more than just mindless entertainment Myst finally got the rest of the world to look over and take notice with the unprecedented reception Brandon Robin became fast celebrities they were heralded as geniuses they were rich and they had achieved that most elusive and undeniable sign of true success their own gap ad so of course there was going to be more Myst randon Robin had not intended to make the backstory that they had created for a Juris and his son's public but after the positive reception of the game they realized there was an audience for their lore they wrote a novel telling the backstory of Atreus leading up to the events of the first game in it were introduced to Atrus as a young boy growing up in the desert with his grandmother Anna before being reclaimed by his estranged father again and taken to the now dead crumbling ruin of the great city of dunny which lies deep underground the novel introduces the conflict between Atreus and his megalomaniac father as well as Ganz personal age Riven and age his future wife Katherine unhappy with the quality of their draft they worked with author David Wingrove to rewrite the novel missed the book of Atreus was released to mixed reviews but reached the bestseller list a second novel followed a year later also by wind Grove and the Millers the book of tiana was a prequel that told the story of addresses grandfather Atreus with an eye and Anna a surface human who stumbled upon the city of dunny the book also covered the birth again and the fall of dummy well not all-time classics the miss novels were surprisingly well written and chock full of fantastic world-building for the core fans in some ways the novel's marked the true beginning of the series as they introduced the central pillars of the lore the art of writing and the dunny culture elements that would play a much larger part in the next game development on the sequel de mis began immediately Sian hired a larger team of collaborators including former ILM and Disney artist Richard van der Linde whose credits included the movie Aladdin working under the title eka Kwai Sian Tekel ditz biggest project yet the budget was ten times that of mist and the scope of the design was larger too The Seagull would be a direct continuation of mist and would time were directly into the backstory that they had developed Robin in particular had ambitious goals for telling a complex mature story feeling that the original mist had been disappointingly simplistic as the Atrus ending of mist teased a traces wife Katherine has been imprisoned by his father again on his own personal age of ribbon Atrus begs the player to track down and rescue Katherine while he stays behind amending the book of ribbon to keep the age from falling apart armed with the trap book the player sets off to free Katherine and captured again who has enslaved the inhabitants of the aged there's also a rebellion brewing among the inhabitants and well it's clear there's a lot more going on than in the original perhaps sensing that equi Quay is a terrible name Sian changed the title to ribbon and began production we're kind of like trying we were stumbling around trying to find a style for this thing most of our stumbling around was still a little bit too much in the direction of mist it still had a kind of that romantic architecture working with Richard van der wind they developed a new style that felt grittier earthier and more weathered this was a world that didn't just exist to be pretty it was a world where animals live their lives where villagers ate slept and created after he came he imbued the whole project with a flavor that was a bit more edgy and strange and odd Sian graduated to s GI workstations and painstakingly modelled thousands of unique in-game objects down to the nails and screws textures were based on photographs taken during a trip to Santa Fe rather than digitally painted and custom shaders were written to mimic the look of stone water sunlight and more contributing to this leap towards photo realism was the evolving aesthetic of Riven Riven is a single age comprised of multiple islands rather than the separate ages of the first game while the islands have their own visual identities they are clearly part of the same world and every part of them serves a purpose beyond mere gameplay considerations where mists disparate architectural styles and biomes felt a bit thrown together Riven felt like a real place buildings machines geographical features and even children's toys were all designed to feel like part of a cohesive natural world that had a history both geological and anthropological Richard a Watson a programmer who had helped out on missed in the final stretch helped develop a written and spoken language and a system of numerals for the dunny which featured prominently in the game the puzzles were better integrated into the world this time relying less on goofy abstract obstacles like musical notes and more on concrete interactions with the world like altering the flow of water through pipes and learning to count in dummy numerals not that this meant they were any easier Riven is legendarily difficult and I've yet to meet someone who finished the game without resorting to a guide the fire marble puzzle in particular the yet the puzzles were fair and logical devious and brilliant Riven was a massive undertaking for Sian and it's not an exaggeration to say that everything was riding on his success despite growing the team with top-tier talent and throwing a huge budget of the project the game was delayed from 1996 into late 97 causing publisher brøderbund stock to plummet as production dragged on there was a sense of tension and weariness to the tsiyon offices brand didn't see the necessity of spending so much extra time on tiny details that most players would never notice yet Robin was obsessed with those same details there were money worries as they had refused to take outside money and were operating solely on miss profits they all felt deeply passionate about the game but they wanted it to be over and done with and in October 1997 it was Riven was released to critical praise and incredible sales success became the best-selling game of 1997 despite being released towards the end of the year yet there was a distinct lack of the same ecstatic mainstream attention that Myst received Riven was a maturation of the concepts Myst had been traduced but it lacked the novelty and the gaming world of 1997 was far different from 1993 despite miss popularity it had not assured in an era of mature minimalist games there had been few imitators and most of the industry proceeded as if Myst did not exist and so while ribbon was a critical and commercial success it was not the second coming that some might have hoped for that said in many fans opinions Riven remains the pinnacle of the series the art is gorgeous even today the world still convincing the story still compelling the puzzles are occasionally too damn hard but for the most part they are deeply satisfying to solve there is an unmatched sense of place in Riven of any age in the entire series Riven most feels like it truly exists fully formed out there somewhere just waiting for someone to stumble onto it around this time a third miss book was released the book of Donnie which continued the story of atreus as he and Catherine attempt to rebuild the destroyed dummy Society the book of Donnie is kind of a mess with constant shifts in tone and a plot that feels more like a phoned in Star Trek episode than an essential part of the mists canon the Millers have since admitted that it was rushed to meet ribbons release Tate shortly after the release of ribbon Robin left Sian citing frustration with his inability to tell the stories he wanted through games and interviews from that time portrayal weariness with the world of mist he went on to pursue a variety of other projects in music and film richard van der wind also left leaving sign in the care of only one of its essential creative minds brand from the outside it appeared that Sian went quiet for years brand Miller and Sian with him were not interested in creating more miss eagels in the same vein as Riven they wanted to experiment and to that end sign a Mattel decided to outsource production of further miss sequels while science stayed out of the limelight and quietly worked on their own follow-up project known as a time only by its codename dirt for Donny in real time they began soliciting pitches for numerous developers asking them to provide story and environment concepts analyses of the first two games and technical demonstrations two pitches were accepted one from presto studios makers of the journeyman project series and the other from dream forge entertainment creators of sanitarium soon missed three and for brain development presto studios had a long pedigree of making pre-rendered adventure games the journeyman project series had been going strong for years and was well loved if nowhere near as successful is missed their analysis of the first two games led to certain design pillars for the 31st they wanted to return to the visual variety of the first game with its discrete ages rather than the single age of ribbon second they wanted to give players a way to gauge their progress of the game as neither missed nor ribbon had given a clear indication of how much was left finally they wanted a dramatic and satisfying ending the Presto team also wanted a more coherent self-contained storyline one that didn't rely so much on subtle inferences through the environment like rivet writer Merida morals initial plan was to bring back series and economic and continue their story but that idea was already in use by Dream Forge and she was forced to develop a new concept from scratch mystery exile takes place 10 years after Rubin Atreus and Catherine have been focused on locating the survivors bunny and helping them rebuild their society Atreus writes a new age for the survivors to living relation while the rebuilding happens a new character Saavedra breaks into a Drusus study and steals the relation book before linking away the player manages to follow Saavedra and must recover the stolen book in order to secure a future for the dunny presto made the decision to stay with the pre-rendered 3d graphics the series was known for as real-time graphics would require high-end computer hardware that many miss players lacked while the graphics remained pre-rendered they added the ability to pan 360 degrees in any direction an advancement in video technology allowed for the world to include more animated effects such as waves or ripples of water without robbing Miller to provide the music presto needed a new composer they turned to Jack Walt who was given instructions to create a new sound that remained it recognizably mist after immersing himself in the first two games and their soundtracks he produced a new orchestral score that was at times bombastic and action-packed while retaining the quiet mystery and majesty of Miller's work exile was released in May 2001 by Ubisoft to purchase the rights from Mattel they marketed the game with far less fanfare than its predecessors years had passed since Myst was in the spotlight and presto lacked even the fading celebrity status of the Miller brothers while the game was well received and sold fairly well there was no great acclaim no adulation of a work of genius critics accused the game of being a relic of a time past of having lost its relevance mystery is a perfectly fine game with a compelling villain played by the wonderfully weird Brad Dourif and gorgeous worlds to explore the puzzles are satisfying if a bit easy and of course there is great pleasure to be found in wandering around listening to Jack walls amazing score but it is missing a little something the ages you visit in exile were designed by Atrus as tests for his sons and thus they exist primarily to house puzzles they lack the sense of place in history that made Myst and especially Riven so compelling it's as if you're visiting a series of very cool desktop wallpapers rather than a series of worlds not bad just not the same still creating a worthy sequel to a legendary game series is no easy task and Cresto did the Myst named justice unfortunately presto clothes not long after exiles release the second page sign accepted was from dream Forge entertainment for a game with the working title missed for adventure beyond the dunny ultra world a name that should never have left the brain of the guy who suggested it the game was never shown publicly before being cancelled when Ubisoft took over the franchise though assets from the unfinished game have made their way online it was to be the first real-time 3d Miss game and the leaked footage actually looks quite nice but sadly the game was not to be in the early 2000s sign began releasing details about their next project Sian had spent years working on a new 3d engine using an early version of its tech to create real mist a full 3d recreation which was released in 2000 along with an updated re-release of the original called mist masterpiece edition Easter eggs in the masterpiece edition and real myths revealed the first screenshot of the game that came to be known by the codename Mud Pie which stood for multi-user dirt personal interactive environment that's right not only was miss going 3d it was going online the gulper Mud Pie was to create a shared online version of dunny in which players could interact and team up to explore an ever growing roster of Ages instead of telling the story of addresses family Mudpie would take place in the modern day while earlier works had hinted that the cavern of dunny existed on earth Mud Pie presumed that the cavern had been discovered by archaeologists under the New Mexico desert and opened for exploration players would control an avatar for third person for the first time and the game would be subscription supported allowing scientific in ually release new content that would be delivered over a broadband connection even the name of the company was changed to cyan world to emphasize this new focus the idea was revolutionary then and remains so today a massively multiplayer exploration and puzzle game the tsiyon employs taking out roles in game and interacting live with players who might in turn affect the direction of the narrative a storyline that evolves in real time a constant supply of new worlds to explore and solve and even eventually a way for players to create their own world to take part in the art of writing over the next few years a slow drip of screenshots videos and information was released and the die-hard mist fans lack of each drop with increasing fervor with the online components taking extra long to develop Ubisoft requested that cyan release a single-player portion of the game to retail tsiyon grudgingly put together a story mode that took players through some of mudpies content and in 2003 hooroo ages beyond Myst was released as a single-player standalone introduction that would eventually hook into the online component who were live guru is a strange game even by science standards not only does it brave with mis traditions at almost every step third-person platforming real-time graphics etc but it is clearly torn between single-player story obligations and its online persistent world aspirations some ages feel empty and unfinished cobbled together with half implemented ideas while others are teeming with detail and mystery the puzzles are hidden misses well many seem to have been designed with multiplayer behind only to be jerry-rigged into a single-player format that is more frustrating than fulfilling the journey cloths 7 in each age are bland and joyless goal they give no real sense of satisfaction and the plot is as bare bones as can be Aisha with her tribal tattoos new aging magic and preachy anti dummy attitude is a poor substitute for a traces gravitas yet despite all of its issues guru has its moments at its best gurus ages feel like truly ancient worlds rather than puzzle filled obstacle courses and exploring locations that had been key to the mists lore was thrilling the cleft where Atreus was raised for one and of course getting the first glimpses of agura the dunny cavern itself but it was clearly meant as stopgap to buy time until congroo live was ready hooroo is a strange sloppy game but one that gives players a glimpse of science great ambitions which makes it all the more tragic when in 2004 right as cyan was gearing up to launch Ubisoft pulled the plug citing a company-wide move away from online gaming guru live just like that was dead but missed for developed in-house by Ubisoft after the cancellation of dream forges ultra world concept was very much alive Ubisoft Montreal the studio responsible for games like Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia the sands of time had begun development on the 4th miss game shortly after acquiring the license it was the first pre-rendered game they had ever worked on and soon they found themselves struggling in pre-production with a lack of experience after hiring 50 artists they had the opposite problem too many experienced artists with nothing to do as the design was still coming together this led to a conflicted relationship between the design and art departments that lasted throughout the project and caused a high turnover rate almost no one from the initial pre-production team remained when the game shipped weekly team lead meetings were reduced to griping sessions and less than a year out from release none of the games areas were in a finished state the producers made the decision to shift the team structure into small multidisciplinary teams that would focus solely on specific portions of the game and soon after things finally started to come together and the mood brighten significantly with mist 3 presto had been banned from using sirrus and achenar but sigh an encouraging the mist 4 team to center the plot around the brothers married tomorrow returned his writer pending a plot that had sirrus and achenar escaping from their prison ages and kidnapping their younger sister Aisha who had previously been seen as an infant in mystery missed for revelation is the most story heavy game in the series full of character development and action at least what passes for action in this game it is the endpoint of the move from mists minimalism toward a much more direct experience the first puzzle in the game has you assisting atria sins laboratory following his explicit directions to adjust dials and switches just so by moving the slider to select a different signal adjust the center dial the scented dial seems well-adjusted no stop the frequencies good the polar opposite of the originals total lack of hand-holding the game even gives you a necklace that reveals flashbacks to past events a far more explicit method of providing backstory than anything in the series before it makes sense in a way the mystery of the initial games had subsided and now we were left with characters that we knew well who inhabited a universe whose rules had been set down the draw was no longer to discover just what was going on but rather to find out what was going to happen next yet it's arguable just how missed like that approach really is graphically the game is by far the most polished of the series the pre-rendered backgrounds are higher resolution and have an impressive amount of animation that brings the world to life in a way that the previous games can't match trees sway in the wind bugs zip through the air windmills toil away in the distance Atrus and Catherine's home to mana is a joy to explore and as one of the most fully realized locations in the entire series yet the game's troubled development is obvious in its uneven quality puzzles ran from devious and clever to utterly arbitrary and illogical the acting is uniformly terrible and the story goes in some very UNMISS led directions involving spirit Galatea dream manager still the game provides a satisfying conclusion to the story of patron and his sons and is worth playing revelation was released in 2004 and was pretty well received by this point though miss particular brand of adventure felt more and more like a relic of the past while it was a very good one of those games it no longer inspired much aw after the cancellation of guru live sign was struggling financially and sitting on top of years of work that had gone nowhere Ubisoft suggested repackaging that work in two expansion packs for guru without much room to argue Miller agreed and sighin released Aroo to Donnie and path of the shell in 2004 with the expansions in place suru felt like a much richer world - Donnie finally gave players access to the cavern itself and while the gameplay may have been quite sparse exploring agura was a dream come true for many players path of the shell added several new ages and continued uru story though it didn't quite finish it yet sign was under obligation to deliver one more title with some remaining unused assets intended for guru live and a number of loose ends to the plot Sian decided to cobble together a game that would put a bow in the series that had started over a decade earlier missed five end of ages was announced as the final chapter in the series publicly the game was poised as the culmination of the entire series the thrilling finale to a decade-long epic while internally it was a desperate attempt to turn years of unused work into something that could help keep the company afloat this meant that unlike the pre-rendered graphics of Myst one through four and of ages would use the uru engine and the ages you explored would be salvaged from guru lives archives the game returned to the first-person perspective of the mainline miss games but allowed for free roaming through the real-time 3d environments alongside the traditional point-and-click interface the game would be more accurately called guru - as it has very little to do with Asia story like Aroo it takes place in the modern-day some 200 years after the events of the first game the player exploring dunny is approached by an adult Aisha to take an artifact known as the tablet that has the ability to control a mysterious race known as the borrow however the player also meets Hesher a survivor of the fall of dunny who warns that Yi Xie has been driven mad by the tablet and cannot be trusted the player must travel to for ages to find slates that will return the tablets full power and then decide who should be trusted with it a decision that has consequences for entire civilization the games origin as an attempt to make some use a relies cancellation is obvious from the get-go the plot feels like a thin excuse to jump to four random ages that are largely empty and non interactive lacking the thorough attention to detail that is the cornerstone of the franchise there are some gorgeous sights to see but little else of note ayesha greats more than ever whining about her destiny incessantly and while Escher is initially compelling his constant interruptions become tiresome the addition of the tablet and it's used in some puzzles is interesting that quickly becomes repetitive and the concept of using the same item over and over again to solve most puzzles feels at odds with the series standards there honestly isn't much to say about end of ages it's not a trainwreck but it feels lifeless and half-baked it's clearly the product of a rushed desperate development rather than the passion projects that made Sian famous it's a disappointing note for the series to end on though completionists will find some value in seeing it through to the end as it's not without a few surprises and effective appeals to nostalgia after missed 5 Sian was in dire financial trouble Rand Miller was forced to lay off all but two employees and the company was on the verge of shutting down he managed to in his words pull a rabbit out of a hat and negotiate a deal with Turner Broadcasting in what would become a partnership with their game streaming service game tab which secured enough funding to rehire nearly everyone kept afloat by releasing mobile ports of their old games sine began development on a new title codenamed lettuce they also decided to release a free player hosted version of whatever content they had for rule I've one that would lack content updates or the live storytelling that had been so important to the concept but at least get players in the cavern until guru only lasted a few months before being shut down only this time it was with good news at e3 2006 Sian and game tab announced the fruit of their partnership Myst online guru live was going to launch through game tap within the next year and after a round of beta testing it finally launched in early 2007 for a year Myst online existed almost as it had intended though years of financial trouble had left Sian less than able to deliver on its ambitious plans new content was scarce and eventually plans were shifted from constant live updates to less frequent episodic releases for that year though faithful fans inhabited the cavern sharing an alive storytelling experience and creating many of their own players organized cavern social events analyze the game secrets and began planning their own ages it was sometimes hard to tell who was assigned employee role-playing as a character and who was simply a player though much of the game was familiar content from every single player releases players were drawn in by the unique sense of community that only a small struggling niche game can create of course small niche communities do not successful mmo's make and despite the passionate support of its community mist online was shut down only a year and a half later due to lack of subscribers over the next few years sign will attempt to keep the dream alive through a free donation supported server and eventually releasing all of mist online source code free to the community to do with as they wished a dedicated few remain on these fan run servers but in the end mist online marks both the high point for sign world's ambition and the low point for its failure sian went quiet after miss dawn lines shut down occasionally releasing a port ory release of mist or releasing its games on Steam there had been no word of their lattice project for years and it seemed the company fed up with dealing with large publishers was going to settle into place as a sort of holding company for the mists property in the meantime something strange happened the Millers had once stated that after being told over and over again that they had reinvented computer games they had waited for the imitators to come and they never did outside of a few low-budget adventure games no one tried to do what miss had done or even really anything close it turns out that miss influence headsman far-reaching but that influence would not be felt in mainstream triple-a games the costs were too high the risk is too great with the rise of indie games starting in 2008 led to a renaissance of many genres among them a new wave the cherished atmosphere puzzles and storytelling over fast action or spectacle games like braid dear Esther and gone home owed much of their design to science experiments and now we live in a world where games like the witness and everybody's gone to the rapture are not only given wide release but her featured on stage at e3 a generation of gamers had grown up with mist and now they were making games that spoke to that history alongside the indie Renaissance another fundamental change in the gaming industry gave sine another chance to produce something new and exciting Rand Miller has been quoted as saying that the smartest way to run a business is with someone else's money but the most satisfying way is to use your own that was his way of saying that working with publishers was an exhausting demoralizing experience and no wonder considering his history with Ubisoft Kickstarter offered a revenue stream that gave developers a way to raise funding for a game without being beholden to a publisher instead they were beholden to thousands of paying passionate customers who could simultaneously be more understanding and far more demanding more and more developers many of them famous for their work in the 90s returning to Kickstarter and finding great success raising millions toward passion projects that hearkened back to their glory days it seemed like a perfect fit for Sian they decided what the hell let's try it rather than trying to kick-start their larger more ambitious lattice project they went with a smaller more familiar pitch and the Kickstarter for abduction launched in 2013 and raised 1.3 million dollars so the idea behind abduction is is really to provide that same experience you had when you landed on the dock on mist Island that same feeling when you touch down and said why am I here what am i doing and you just set out to explore abduction used the Unreal Engine 4 and Mark the first time that science real-time graphics could stand up next to their pre-rendered work and as a nod to their earlier work abduction would feature full motion video actors superimposed into the world as in mist 5 players could move freely or use a point-and-click interface and for the first time the game would be developed with virtual reality in mind Rand reached out to his brother Robin late in the project and Robin agreed to compose the score marking their first collaboration since written abduction was released in August 2016 and while it's too early to tell if it will have a lasting impact it has been warmly received as a return to form for Sian and a beautiful challenging adventure game in its own right in an interview with Eurogamer shortly after abductions launched Rand Miller reacted to the reception I gotta say it's been a good day it's been just shy of three years you start out the morning of shipping not knowing how the reviews are going to be and it's like oh good it's a good day where to sign go from here there are side projects that have been on the back burner for years the forth miss book the book of Meryem has been in the works for over a decade and there have been on again off again plans for a Miss TV series that inch ever closer to fruition but the prospect of Sian breaking away from mist and tackling new original ideas is perhaps even more exciting after all what made miss special was the sense of venturing into the unknown of discovering new worlds and teasing them apart as much as I personally loved them this series I have felt the dimensioning returns of going back to the well mist is lessened when it's familiar and abduction proves that Sian has other fascinating worlds and where to sign go from here I'm excited to say I don't know

Channel: Ludodrome

Views: 567,636

Rating: 4.8991132 out of 5

Keywords: gaming, gaming history, myst, cyan, obduction

Id: h4wWITMUop0

Length: 45min 39sec (2739 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/strike__anywhere]

There was a journal supplied along with the game and my dad and I actually wrote clues in the journal. Really I was too young to know what was happening, but he made it seem like the most magical world that we were playing in. Thanks for posting this

[u/Dougasaurus1]

Picked up a PS1 copy of this game recently. Im like 3 hours into it and I’m already so confused.

[u/betafishmusic]

I loved Myst and Riven. And particularly enjoyed the scores.

[u/Reztroz]

My dad got it back when it came out originally. He had a whole notebook filled from it. Eventually he caved and bought the guide it. The official guide is actually really cool, its split into 2 parts. One is written journal style by the protagonist as they solve the puzzles, the other part is just the solutions to the puzzles. I've used it before, the puzzle with the weights/gears in the lighthouse/clock tower, and the pod train thing. It's super helpful for those!

[u/aindriahhn]

Myst, Riven, Exile, Uru; the series that made me interested in videogames

[u/NameAnonymous]

"Sure you can kick your heels in the babbling brook and watch the sunlight playing off the flowers but eventually you'll have to stand up and gormlessly stare at the back of a cereal box."

[u/gibbdaddy]

I remember playing this game on a super old computer with whatever slowass CD-ROM it had, so the sound and video didn't always lineup perfectly.

There's a part of the game when you open up a creaky door, and I've heard that exact same door-open sound effect in about 500 tv shows or movies since then. I always think back to Myst whenever I hear that creaky door sound effect.

[u/shaolinspunk]

I was always a little on edge playing Myst. Like I was going to rotate the camera and there would be a jumpscare waiting. And the audio wad so atmospheric which didn't help.

[u/vadsamoht3]

I installed the original Myst maybe 10 years ago. Spent an hour or so walking around, got absolutely nowhere, and have been too intimidated to even think about starting to play it again.